WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development
Print ISSN: 1790-5079, E-ISSN: 2224-3496
Volume 13, 2017
Municipal Sustainable Coastal Governance: Participatory Approaches for System Analysis and for Local Monitoring Development
Authors: , , , ,
Abstract: Within the EU BONUS BaltCoast project there were analysed as integrated coastal management (ICM) recognized case studies in Latvia and other Baltic sea region countries, applying System Analysis Framework (SAF) methodology, being based on socio-ecological systems (SES) studies approach complemented by local stakeholder’s involvement and related participatory ICM decision-making. Most of former ICM practice cases available have been different from both mentioned SAF approaches, but in many cases there were recognizable most known traditional ICM elements. General problems found were related to the following limitations - ICM project/problem team establishment and working practice as multi-disciplinary and SES oriented, stakeholder full scale and whole problem-solving period participatory forums/media and communications, limited/formal participation, mainly top-down and not bottom-up approaches used with often lacking collaboration elements and, particularly, coastal communication etc. Afterwards, SAF designed local case studies in the 6 partner countries were established and research-and-development projects started in cooperation with local municipalities and other stakeholders. In Latvia, taking into account mentioned ICM cases deficiencies and previously known limitations of ICM understanding and capacities building, Salacgriva rural municipality coastal governance case has been under SAF application development via selected Collaborative governance scenario, which is to be elaborated and tested, applying into municipal governance practice ICM Interface module, previously studied and designed by national research program project SUSTINNO, namely developing complementary set of incremental governance cycle instruments. All proposed instruments could be considered as national/local innovations: Coastal SES status and governance thematic report (Coastal Outlook); Collaborative municipal coastal monitoring programme, incl. particularly citizen science application (Coastal monitoring); Coastal indicators system (CIS); Coastal spatial planning proposal. Finally, mentioned voluntary municipal ICM instruments are to be integrated into mandatory municipal development planning system and documents, particularly, Spatial development plan. The main objective of the paper is to demonstrate transfer from coastal research/data to practical instruments development and establishment for local coastal governance, and, in this paper, we were focusing on the development of coastal monitoring program and indicators system, both with citizens’ science components.
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Keywords: coastal governance, collaboration governance scenario, interface, coastal monitoring, indicators
Pages: 276-290
WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, ISSN / E-ISSN: 1790-5079 / 2224-3496, Volume 13, 2017, Art. #29